1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to card shuffler devices for live card games and, more particularly, to a card shuffling system controlled by a computer which is able to capture an image, store, keep track of, and deliver random playing cards and display the images of the cards.
2. Discussion of the Prior Art
Card shuffling machines are electromechanical devices that are designed to reorder a deck or multiple decks of playing cards for use in casino games. Recently, games have been developed that require shuffling a single deck of cards into a random order and the delivery of hands of cards to each player. These hands are removed from the machine by an operator and given to the players. Several game strategies require the hands of cards to be delivered to the players in different amounts depending on the selected game. For example, there may be 3, 5, 7, or more cards per hand in each different game. For security reasons, some shufflers count the number of cards in the deck each time a game is dealt.
With players at numerous remote sites for the live card games, a security problem exists that becomes critically important, as there exists a substantial risk of cheating and/or card counting. A need, therefore, exists to create a secure environment that permits the operation of live card games while providing significant security to prevent cheating and counting.
Pfeiffer, et al., (U.S. Pat. No. 4,667,959) discloses an apparatus for storing and selecting cards. The apparatus contains a rotatably mounted carousel which dispenses playing cards with rollers to slots of an output port. Cards are pre-marked with known markings, such as bar codes, so that the apparatus can keep track of which slot holds which card. A sensor reads the identification markings on the cards.
Soules, et al., (U.S. Pat. No. 5,067,713) teaches of coded playing cards and apparatus for dealing a set of cards. There is provided a deck of cards which is encoded with a bar code that is invisible to the human eye. The cards are coded using an essentially invisible bar code that can be read by an electro-optical reading means which uses light in the infrared or ultra-violet range. The object of this apparatus is to allow the dealer to deal coded playing cards in the essence of teaching.
The patent to Albrecht (U.S. Pat. No. 5,374,061) discloses a card dispensing shoe having a counting device and method of using. A system is described which uses a specially coded deck of cards indicating the value and suit of the card. The system involves using a special pack of cards encoded with information carrying two types of data: numerical digits and alphabetical characters. The numerical information corresponds to the card value, and the alphabetical information indicates the series of the pack of cards. This information is in the form of the bar code, or some other machine readable format. The sensor senses the code on each card as it is being dealt.
Hill, et al., (U.S. Pat. No. 5,722,893) discloses a card dispensing shoe that has a card scanner. The scanner senses each card as it moves downwardly and out from the shoe. The scanner may be an infrared laser scanner capable of reading a bar code imprinted on the cards. Hill, et al., also discloses the optical scanning of the cards resulting in a high resolution array which is stored in memory for converting into word vectors. These vectors are subsequently used as input to a feed-forward neural network which is trained using error-back propagation to sense and recognize the possible card suits and card values.
Meissner et al. (U.S. Pat. No. 5,779,546) teaches of an automated gaming system and method of automated gaming. An automated dealing shoe automatically advances and interprets the value of a playing card and provides an interface to a computing system. Optical sensors are employed to record the number of spots and their respective spatial relations to thereby determine the card value.
McCrea, Jr. has a series of patents teaching of a card shuffling device having image capturing means. These U.S. Pat. Nos.: 5,605,334; 5,707,287; 5,735,525; 6,093,103; and 6,117,012 disclose the need for game control via accurately collecting and storing the suit and value of each card received by each player position. The game control stores this information in a memory so that a history of each card dealt is recorded. The game control can thus detect winning progressions and automatically issue an award signal.
None of these patents either teaches or suggests a card shuffling device that can shuffle the playing cards in a random order, capture images of the playing cards before output, process the images of the cards, and display the images of the cards, all within the confines of the shuffler. There is no need for complicated card-recognition software, or transforming the image into word vectors, or other card value data expressions, because the images are relayed directly to a display on the shuffler device.